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"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."

~ Anton Chekhov

"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple."

~ Dr. Suess

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

~ Douglas Adams

Tag Archives | Jenny Crwys-Williams

Jenny’s Reads: Great Books for the Festive Season

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Finally, we’ve come face to face with whatever 2019 holds for us. It was only yesterday, it seems, that we were saying the same thing at the end of 2017. The one thing that is certain is that this year has been so tumultuous that nothing any of the sages and wannabe sages gave us […]

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Jenny’s Reads: the Man Booker Prize plus festive season reads

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It’s come and it’s gone. Of course, I’m referring to the illustrious Booker Prize, often described as the world’s most important literary prize in the English language. It’s changed a great deal in the last few years. A decision was taken to allow the Americans in and nothing’s been the same since. They wiped the […]

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Jenny’s Reads: Stranger Than Fiction

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The thing with this time of the year is not the weather. It’s not the lengthening days. Nor is it the thought of the summer holidays fast approaching or the overwhelming slog to get beach fit. It is the annual glut of the best books of the year all jostling for attention, popping through letter […]

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Jenny’s Reads: Books to Savour

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Imagine my delight when a publisher heading a large international publishing house confided that he woke up every morning around four thirty, brushed his teeth, slipped his feet into slippers if it was winter, wrapped himself up in his dressing gown, made himself a cup of tea and settled down in a chair and began […]

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Jenny’s Reads: Reading Lists and Fine Local Literature

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Barack Obama does them frequently. Bill Clinton occasionally does as well. And to my great delight Michael Jordaan (former highly innovative head of FNB and now involved in launching an online bank, wine and so much more) decided to announce his winter holiday one. Yes: we’re talking about reading lists, usually coinciding with a longish […]

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Jenny’s Reads: Award Winners and More Books to Read

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So there we are. It’s done and it’s dusted and a great deal of bubbly has been consumed. Of course, I am talking (finally) about the Sunday Times Literary Awards. In case you haven’t heard, the prestigious Alan Paton Award went to Bongani Ngqulunga for The Man Who Founded the ANC: A Biography of Pixley […]

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Jenny’s Reads: Sunday Times Literary Awards Picks

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It’s not a late night – the Sunday Times Literary Awards shortlist announcements. The room, in an eyrie above Empire Road, was abuzz, though, because it’s an evening that rocks. And she saw me before I saw her. There’s no mistaking Yewande Omotoso. She is over six foot and she towers over me. “I haven’t […]

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Jenny’s Reads: Authors Coming to SA Book Festivals

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It’s a fact: from the end of April on it is the time for book awards, book festivals and a glory of books falling off presses with such rapidity they become a blur. This marks the beginning of my Christmas reading pile, for there is no way anyone on this planet can read everything. Right […]

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Jenny’s Reads: Books to Savour over your Easter Break

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We have a delicious glut of public holidays ahead. They stretch from Easter right through until 1st May and each of them holds the promise of carefully contrived long weekends sandwiched around most of them. But which books does one choose to go with the wine that goes with the friends that go with the […]

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Jenny’s Reads: Books on My Radar

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I love this time of year. I love the plane trees just beginning to turn gold, with the promise of autumn ahead. I love getting a scruffy garden into the last of summer shape. I love my vegetable garden with plants straining to produce their fruit before the sun holds no warmth and they are […]

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